What did you do today? If you had a job you maybe did a variety of things, perhaps stocked shelves and helped customers, or cooked or served food at a restaurant, crunched numbers and kept books for a company. There are a variety of jobs that people do that fill our eight or more hours per day with all kinds of tasks. Some jobs have quantifiable results. When I worked in a metal foundry we knew how many pounds of finished product we had prepared each day. Other jobs are less quantifiable, such as counseling and guiding. If you are a parent or caregiver, your day may be filled with laundry, cleaning and meal preparation. Perhaps you have kept track and know exactly how many diapers you change in a day. That too is quantifiable. Whatever your vocation is, I hope that it is satisfying and leaves you with the feeling of having done a good days work.

Here are some numbers that trouble me: In 2008 there were 1.21 million abortions in the United States. (Due to reporting and compiling, the numbers for the last few years are not yet available.) Of those, 1.3% were after 21 weeks gestation.* I will get to the importance of that number in a moment.

Many of us know someone who has undergone the pain of a miscarriage. A child is conceived, a pregnancy occurs, and hopes begin for this new life. For a variety of reasons not all pregnancies carry through to term, and there is pain, and sorrow, and grief. This is the loss of a child. The pain is as real as it is for a born child. Often miscarriages are only known by a few: the woman, her physician, perhaps her partner and close confidants. The child is known and loved by God, and the Christian community can love and help during the grieving process.

When we grieve we sometimes hear thoughtless comments that cause additional pain. When we love well others who are grieving we will have words that help and not hurt. We can all learn how to help others grieve, and there are resources for that.

Valentine’s Day can be lonely, dissappointing, and painful if we accept the world’s view of romantic love. The following excerpt from Not My Own, by Terry Schlossberg and the late Elizabeth Achtemeier, clarifies Whose we are and how we are loved by Him.

The Biblical Good News

Over against the empty desolation of individualism that undergirds abortion, however, the Bible sets a different announcement about the nature of human life, and that announcement is indeed good news. First of all, in the biblical world-view, there is no such thing as an autonomous individual. Rather, in its very first pages, the Bible proclaims that we are all made by God in his image (Gen. 1:26-27) and that we can therefore never fully be understood except in relation to our Creator. Psychology, sociology, economics, medicine, art, every branch of humanities and of science may describe our humanity, but unless our relationship to God is included in that description, we have not been fully and accurately described. We were created to live in relationship with our Maker, and that relationship is an integral part of our humanity.

According to Father Pierre Lachance, a scholar-educator at St. Anne church, Fall River, Massachusetts, an intimate connection exists between secular humanism and such social and moral evils as abortion, adultery, divorce and teen sex and pregnancies. He points out that “Secular means that man’s vision of life is formed without any reference to God. Secular humanists deny the existence of God.” Humanism means that man—not God—is the center of the universe; man is the measure of all things, of truth and error, right and wrong, good and bad. Secular humanists worship man rather than God.Concerning the secular humanists’ belief that man is the measure of all things, Father Lachance observes: “A very self-centered and selfish philosophy. That selfishness has led, for example, to multiple divorces. If I no longer love my wife, I can, without any sense of guilt, exchange her, like a car. Selfishness, lack of commitment and responsibility for others, have led to the breakdown of the family and of society.”

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday (SOHLS) will be celebrated in churches across the nation this Sunday, January 20, 2013. In sermons, prayers, and songs, worshipers will acknowledge God as our Creator and affirm our identity as persons made in his image and set apart for his glory and service.

Motte Brown wrote this account of the establishment of SOHLS in 2007. It is currently posted on Boundless Line:

In 1983, an organization named Christian Action Council (now known as Care Net), founded with the help of Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, asked President Ronald Reagan to "create a special day to focus on the intrinsic value of human life."